Looking back on 2025, the National City Christian Church and Foundation is pleased to see growth in some key areas of our ministry. Like many churches and foundations, it took time to emerge from the pandemic, assess what our new needs were, reconnect with our long standing strengths, and make decisions that equip our ministry to be sustainable and faithful to God’s call. In that spirit, we’d like to share a few of the moments from 2025 we are celebrating.
National City continued its long standing commitment to justice by renewing our established partnerships and building new ones. In April, we worked with our ecumenical, interfaith, and denominational partners to host a prayer vigil prior to a court case before the Supreme Court. In June, our campus alongside DC Pride, hosted World Pride. We partnered with AllianceQ of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ’s Office of Gender and Sexuality to host a welcoming presence for the parade, National Trans Visibility March Empowerment Service, and several musical performances. That week we also joined other faith leaders in a rally with the Poor People’s Campaign.
In addition to national partnership on milestone events, we continued to be a steady presence for our neighbors in D.C. with our food pantry. Our food pantry serves on average 250 individuals a week and maintains service every week of the year. We enhance this ministry in December with the Great Day of Giving, where we provide new dignity staples and warm clothes to our neighbors. We are proud to have such an ongoing feeding ministry in our community.
Our Music and Arts program continued to celebrate excellence in performing arts. Music at Midday, our free Friday organ concert, celebrated another stunning season of special guests and opened our doors to a wide range of public audiences who visit to take in our historic sanctuary and beautiful performing arts.
We also partnered with Gay Men’s Chorus of Great Washington D.C. as they welcomed Gay Men’s Chorus chapters from across the country for World Pride. The concert we hosted in our space captured the joy and creativity of God’s love.
National City Christian Church and Foundation spent the 2025 year working to strengthen its physical presence on Thomas Circle. We opened our office space to welcome three new partner tenants. Additionally, we added two new full time staff with a commitment for at least one more, to support the faithful management of our facility and bring us to a staffing plan that better supports our historic space and its impactful programing. We also continued with facility improvements, including some 2025 improvements we are thrilled to be announcing in 2026.
Often in ministry, it is easy to see all that has yet to be done, but as we look back on 2025 as a Foundation, we are pleased to see that the national church said yes to God’s invitation to collaborate and strengthen our presence as the national church of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). We are excited to share more of what we are working on in 2026 with the wider church, as we share in this expansive vision of our founding Disciples and the church.